Hi all!

You probably know me as the foul mouthed crotchety bard in the FC, but I am also an MMORPG researcher.
There was a reason why I decided to choose FFXIV as the fertile bed from which I would pickup research data. It's a game that is somewhat unforgiving, it's a reboot of an existing franchise so was not expected to get the typical new massive initial surge in player population (although it did), as there was already an established market, and, as a consequence, I would hazard a guess that most of the established members of Soulbound and some of the new ones would be veterans on the genre itself.

I am still working through my ethics application for "legally" talking to you all, but the main gist of my research question is this:

"Why do you leave MMORPGs?"

A simple question, but pretty open to interpretation.
So basically, I wanted to start a discussion and get some opinions on why either you or others may have left an MMORPG you had previously played.

I would encourage critical self-reflection as well, as an answer such as, "It's shit" or "CBF" isn't super useful.

I'm not needing the data yet, but when the day comes at least some of you will understand what's going on ;)

Cheers Ed

Proposal below:

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Problem Statement

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (hence referred to as MMORPGs) have been a unique genre within gaming since the 1970s, but only within the last two decades have they begun to have an impact on mainstream culture, firstly with the breakthrough franchises of Ultima Online (Mythic Entertainment, 1997)(leveraging on a previously established fan base) and Everquest (989 Studios, 1999), and more recently, with the massive success of World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) (also leveraged on an existing fan base).

In 2010, the market was valued at over US$4 billion in the US alone, and, US$6.8 billion in East Asia, which experienced over 2000 percent growth between 2008 and 2010 (Hou, A.C.Y. et. al., 2011; Cai, M. 2006). Academics such as T.L. Taylor, Lawrence Lessig and Edward Castronova see virtual worlds as the next frontier of human exploration. On the other hand, many theorists also see addictive and socially destructive potential of them as well (Lee, I et. al., 2007). In any case, what cannot be denied is that MMORPGs elicit a powerful response from those that interact with them.

Despite this, and the growth within the genre, both in market size and mainstream presence, there has been a dramatic fall in the average viable commercial lifespans of MMORPGs in the last decade, and this has been reflected in the widespread movement away from pay to play subscription models (where users are required to pay before accessing content), towards free to play revenue streams (where the platform and access to it is free to access, but extra features, or content can be purchased by players, which may or may not place them at an advantage).

According to a study done on one of the most successful MMORPGs of this current generation, EVE Online (Chang, W. et. al. 2007), 25% of the total population within this virtual world quits (otherwise referred to a churn) monthly, and beyond those players who joined within the first month of activity, 75% of new players, on average, quit within their first month of participation. This varies from franchise to franchise (for example, over a two month period in 2006, Everquest II (Sony Online Entertainment, 2004) experienced a total churn rate of 47.9% amongst all players (including but not limited to new players) (Srivastava, J. 2011)), and is impacted by market trends and developer actions (sometimes dramatically), but relatively high rates of churn seems common to all MMORPGs. Players have also been shown to be socially influenced by other players who quit in such a way that if a neighboring player they had contact with quit; they are also more likely to quit (Kawale .J. et. al. 2009). This of course, leads to the possibility of a catastrophic cascading effect, an effect seen in many MMORPG lifecycles (MMOData.net, 2013), especially from smaller developers who may not have the resources to arrest the decline.

Despite this, MMORPGs continue to be rather homogenous in design, iteratively improving functionality rather than innovating to address the above issue. One reason for this is, perhaps, because the developers originating from the breakthrough franchise of Ultima Online (Origin Systems, 1997) continue to have a major influence on the direction of how contemporary MMORPGs are made.

So, it is then, perhaps, not a surprise, that there has been very little research into understanding why people leave them, and why this has been an accelerating trend in the current generation of MMORPGs. I have already discussed the socially influenced aspect of churning intentions outlined by (Srivastava, Z.B.J. et. al. 2011; Lee, I. et. al. 2007; Hou, A.C.Y. et. al. 2007; Kawale, J. et. al. 2009), and the long-term study on EVE online by (Chang, W. et. al. 2007) hypothesized that perhaps the mechanics designed into MMORPGs engendered systemic stratified inequality, which created insurmountable barriers for new players, who were shown to be more likely to quit within the first month of commencing play the longer the MMORPG franchise had been active.

However, up to this point, theorists have approached this subject with a pre-defined agenda. Kawale (2009) approached from a marketing perspective, and viewed the player as a customer to be retained, and Chang (2007) viewed players from a macro sociological perspective and concluded with an economistic interpretation of why people might have left. In order to circumvent any assumptions one might have about MMORPGs and their players (and there are many, as the interaction with MMORPG networks continues to be a contentious one), this thesis will employ the framework of Actor Network Theory to understand why people leave MMORPGs.


Research Approach

Actor Network Theory (ANT) starts with assuming there is not an existing macrosociological power structure governing derivative microsociological groups. In that way ANT provides a way for this thesis to divorce itself from the typical conceptions of developer player relations; of the importance of the material over the virtual; of class and level stratification; of the addictive potential of MMORPGs; or of the future utopian potential of them, that have given rise to the polemical nature of debates within MMORPG studies. In other words, ANT is ontologically flat.

ANT is constructivist in its approach to the social and treats all objects that make up the social as equal in their capacity to participate, interact and also oppose, whether human or otherwise, powerful or marginalized. Whether an object is seen as influential or not is an effect generated as a consequence of its interactions with other objects.

In the same vein the social is seen as a network of heterogenous objects, which, through interactions as they pass each other, generate the effects that shape our perceptions of them, objects themselves are also a construction born out the network interactions that have, in most cases, gone through a process of consolidation, where a series of network relations are so commonly associated with one another that they have overcome their own oppositional tendencies and come to be perceived as a single point. Hence, the term “actor-network” (here being also referred to as “object”), as Law (1992) puts it, it is both simultaneously a noun and verb.

The ANT conception of the social lends itself particularly well to the analysis of MMORPGs, as they are, by their very nature, a construct. Research done by Hou et. al. (2007) on player behavior, quitting, and churning, shows network effects, which correlate with the ANT conception of an actor-network. Additionally, ANT is more of a descriptive, rather than prescriptive theory. Developer’s intentions are held to the same level as players, and the mechanics of the game neither superseded nor are overruled by the actions of the actor-networks that interact with them; unless otherwise proven through research. This also allows for other theories to fit within its framework.

Another reason why ANT is an appropriate theoretical framework in this context is the ability for the researcher to analyze is the tenuous and constantly shifting marriage of the effects of heterogenous actor networks and homogeny within the social, a source of inherent instability within systems, and common within MMORPGs.

To briefly outline, players are encouraged to be heterogenous. They are afforded the ability to customize their graphical presence (known as avatars) in ways that would not be possible in physical reality and differentiate themselves from others through such practices as conspicuous consumption. They are encouraged to compete against other individual players or groups of players. In fact, competition is considered such an important component of success within an MMORPG that some franchises rely entirely on competitive play (for example Guild Wars (ArenaNet, 2005), and the ill-fated Fury (Auran, 2007)). On the other hand, MMORPGs were founded upon cooperative play, deriving elements from Dungeons and Dragons (Gygax, G. 1974). Long before developers began embracing the competitive elements of play, players, so enthused by the prospect of virtual interaction engendered cooperative play within early franchises such as MUD (Bartle, R. and Trubshaw, R. 1978) and Habitat (Lucasfilm Games, 1986). Even within contemporary MMORPGs the difficulty of completing developer created content, in most cases, rapidly scaled to a much higher level than could possibly be accomplished by a single player and players are limited by developers in the ways that they can develop their avatars such that they could not possibly have all the requisite skills to complete difficult tasks alone. In that way, as skill development and efficiency become requisite in simply consuming content, MMORPGs could move players towards more homogenous modes of play. Examples of homogenous play can be seen in the emergence of the term “cookie-cutter”, referring to the method by which a player develops their avatar to emulate another who might be demonstrating desired characteristics of competitive advantage, or the consolidation of many styles of play into the roles of “tank”, “healer” and “damage dealer”, or even the homogenity of the genre itself, with many contemporary MMORPGs directly adopting mechanics from major franchises such as World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) or Guild Wars. These can all be viewed from an ANT perspective as examples of simplification. However, these classifications are themselves a moving target. What the developer might prescribe is always subject to contentions; challenged and negotiated with and between passing interacting actor-networks (objects including players). Indeed, the concepts of cooperation and competition as effects are themselves constantly being reshaped within the MMORPG landscape (take, for example, the phenomenon that was “Leeroy Jenkins” (2006) and the resultant meme and, potentially destructive, but common practice of “Leeroying”). This enduring struggle over meanings is an effect referred to in ANT as translation.

According to ANT the heterogenous elements within a packaged network (the result of simplification) endlessly continue to resist homogenization, subverting translation such that, eventually the packaged network eventually collapses and the networks that comprised it are released from the grasp of punctualization (John Law (1992) provides the example of a computer that is seen as a single entity and is referred to and conceptualized as such; that is, until it breaks). The wider and more deeply ingrained this punctualization, the more dramatic the collapse. This partly correlates with Chang’s (2007) hypothesis arising out of their long term study of player behaviour within the MMORPG franchise, EVE Online, that structural inequalities that led to accumulated wealth and a stratified society were the reason for the rapid loss of new participants of MMORPGs.

However, the conclusions by ANT theorists on the breakdown of packaged networks are, to use ANT terms, an effect of interactions with the theoretical framework. In the same mold, it is not the purpose of this thesis to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, rather, it aims to explore the objects that might create the effect of a players intention to leave an MMORPG, and determine whether the relations of these object interactions generate the effect of the player (also an object) actualizing their intentions.


Existing Literature

In terms of existing literature within MMORPG studies extremely limited research has been done on why players leave MMORPGs (Kawale, J. et. al. 2009; Chang, W. et. al. 2007; Hirsh, R. et. al. 2013; Webber, N. 2006) and none performed with ANT as its specific framework.

The two most fundamental texts in understanding the make up of MMORPGs in a more general manner include the works of Edward Castronova starting with his 2001 paper, Virtual Worlds: A First Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier, followed by books in 2005 (Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games) and 2007 (Exodus to the Virtual World), and Richard Bartle’s Designing Virtual Worlds (2003). Perhaps the most relevant and sophisticated understanding of the quitting intentions of players developed so far has been A Long-Term Study of a Popular MMORPG authored by the team of Wu-chang Feng, Debanjan Saha, and David Brandt in 2007, which looked at the behavior of over 925,000 players within the MMORPG of EVE Online over a period of three years.

In terms of literature concerning Actor Network Theory, Bruno Latour is considered its father. Originally concerned with (and, eventually, by) the anthropology of scientists in particular, Latour redeveloped his approach to the process of thought, the conception of knowledge and its transmission in his 1991 work, We Have Never Been Modern. He continued his critique on contemporary practices of academia with Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam (2004), but his theoretical framework came into its current material-semiotic form in his 2005 work, Reassembling the Social in which he self-evaluated his own work, re-developed his idea of the “real”, and further divorced himself from the concept of normative and pre-conceived principles, institutions and constructs. Other academics that have helped popularize the approach include John Law (1986, 1999) and Michael Callon (1990).

One of the interesting characteristics of ANT, primarily driven by Latour (1999), has been its constant willingness to evolve and, in some cases, re-invent itself.


Contributions to the Field

As stated previously, existing literature in understanding why players leave MMORPGs has been extremely limited in nature, both in quantity and in depth. ANT is a flat and descriptive theoretical framework, and, hence, this thesis aims not to provide solutions, but a greater understanding of this aspect of player behavior. The sparseness of the literature is such that to provide a complete analysis and understanding on the subject matter is likely beyond the scope of this thesis.

There are obvious financial advantages that theorists within the field of marketing have begun to grasp (Chang, W. et. al. 2007; Srivastava, Z.B.J. et. al. 2011; Kawale, J. et. al. 2009), such as the fact that an understanding of player behavior concerning quitting intentions would allow developers to better predict the need to arrest the chance of a catastrophic decline in player population, there by retaining their revenue stream, a less expensive option than attempting to attract new players.

But, more importantly, understanding why players leave MMORPGs is, and would seem to be, essential to understanding how to sustain them in order for them to become that “next frontier of human exploration” that T.L. Taylor, Lawrence Lessig and Edward Castronova see, rather than allow them to undergo the process of punctualization to become simple entertainment commodities that, despite contradicting each other on their approaches to this matter, both fathers of MMORPG studies, Edward Castronova and Richard Bartle, object to.